Saturday, January 19, 2013

Kathryn Bigelow, the director of Zero Dark Thirty, wrote the following: “I
think Osama bin Laden was found due to ingenious detective work. Torture was,
however, as we all know, employed in the early years of the hunt. That doesn't
mean it was the key to finding Bin Laden. It means it is a part of the story we
couldn't ignore.”

Bigelow is no fan of torture and, in fact, as her Los Angeles Times essay makes clear, she
is fundamentally opposed to it.But did
her film inadvertently help promote it?Popular movies do have their effects on the public imagination.Witness the way in which Gone with the Wind promoted a heart-warming view of plantation slavery
and Juno made teen pregnancy seem
cool.

Steve Croll, in a terrific piece on Zero Dark Thirty in the New York Review of Books points out that
Americans have grown more comfortable with torture in recent years.Stanford scholar Amy Zegart attributes this
change in attitudes, in part, “to the influence of ‘spy-themed entertainment.’”

Zegart is referring to shows like the TV series 24 in which torture is portrayed as
vitally important in saving America from catastrophic terrorist attacks.But torture is not crucial to our well-being,
and shame on the 24 writers for
making it seem so.

Croll goes on to argue that Zero Dark Thirty is problematic because it may influence the public
debate about torture by virtue of its “distorted contribution.”

I think Croll is correct.Though I have to admire Zero Dark Thirty as a work of dramatic art, I believe it will all
too likely help fix the idea in American public opinion that torture was useful
and justified in the hunt for Bin Laden, when its usefulness is clearly debatable
and its justification even more so.

Even if torture was helpful in finding bin Laden
(and remember, a number of knowledgeable insiders say it was not) we should not,
in my opinion, resort to it.Better that
the scruffy, bearded 9-11 mastermind had lived to a ripe old age watching video
porn in his dank Abbottabad hideout than that our country should besmirch itself
with waterboarding and the beating of helpless captives.

Let’s just say that we have faced more dangerous
forces in our past than anything presented by today’s Al Qaeda-type religious
fanatics.Abraham Lincoln dealt with the
greatest threat our nation has ever encountered and yet he did not feel it
necessary to torture Confederates in order to preserve the union and end
slavery. Nor did Eisenhower tell his
underlings to torture captured German soldiers in order to defeat Hitler.If these threats to our nation were met
without sanctioned torture, why should it be so damn essential to us in our
fight against nutcase losers like Osama bin Laden?

Some people (former Vice President Dick Cheney,
for example) claim that torture is as American as Honey Boo Boo and just as
lovable.Of course, the kinds of
beatings, waterboardings, confinement to coffin-like boxes, being stripped
naked and hung from the ceiling by one’s wrists for hours at a time portrayed
in Ms. Bigelow’s film are not, Mr. Cheney insists, torture.They are, to use CIA parlance, merely “enhanced
interrogation techniques.”

I wonder if Mr. Cheney ever pictures himself or
his loved ones being interrogated in such an enhanced manner.My guess is no, the only ones he imagines will
ever be subject to such techniques are people who he thinks deserve it: terrorist suspects,
Iranians, Palestinians and Democrats.

There are, we should note, prominent officials in
the U. S. government who are vehemently opposed to torture and they have made
their objections known to Cheney and company.Most notable of these are Senators John McCain (himself a victim of
torture) and Dianne Feinstein.

The Geneva Conventions prohibit combatants (or
anyone else) from inflicting “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular
humiliating and degrading treatment.”So
I have a question for Mr. Cheney and others of the Bush administration who seem
so enthusiastic about using their “enhanced interrogation techniques.”When you all advocate waterboarding captives, the placing
of them in narrow boxes for extended periods, etc., do you tell yourselves
that you are not doing anything that could be considered “humiliating and
degrading?” I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you need to face facts:
to normal Americans your very existence is both humiliating and
degrading.

OK, I’m not really sorry to be the one to tell you
that.

Even if torture does work, decent people
should oppose it and so should Dick Cheney. And, though I congratulate Ms. Bigelow for having
made a compelling film, I object to her film’s implication about the usefulness
of torture and am concerned that it will strengthen the hand of those who want
it to become a permanent part of “the American way.”

Sunday, January 6, 2013

In view of
my longstanding interest in humor, I was intrigued to see that today’s NY Times
referenced “the first-ever United States symposium on the artificial
intelligence of humor” organized by computer scientist Julia M. Taylor et
al.Well, I say it’s about damn time. Humor, after all, is no mere laughing matter.

I want to acknowledge up front that not everyone shares the same sense of humor.For example, at a conference last fall, I managed
to crack up the group at my table with this bit of hilarity: A colleague named
Murray was complaining at some length about spending time at a hotel where a
Chinese family, the Wongs, were having a major event.“Well,” said the exasperated Murray, “wherever
we went, we were told, ‘The Wongs have reserved this room -- these hors d’oeuvres
are for the Wongs -- the Wongs will be using this area, etc.’”To which I responded, “Jeez, Murray, you were
at the Wong place at the Wong time.” At this, the entire table burst into
laughter.

But, when I related this hilarious incident to a
spouse and daughter (who shall remain nameless), the former responded with a
combination head-shake and eye-roll, and the latter by saying flatly, “Were
these Dads at your table?That sounds like
a Dad joke.”

Rodney Dangerfield, now I understand you.

Anyway, my research into the functions and bases
of humor recently included the reading of a fascinating book by Hurley, Dennett and
Adams called Inside Jokes: Using Humor to
Reverse-Engineer the Mind.But this
book, interesting and thought-provoking though it is, does not quite hit the
nail on the head in my opinion.One
point I did get from it is that the actors involved in humor always include humans
or anthropomorphized entities. I had
never thought of this before, but I am convinced that it is not only true, but
very significant.It emphasizes that
humor is above all a social construct with a social kick.

These authors review some of the major theories of
humor including the release of tension theory, the incongruity theory, and the
superiority theory.Of the factors these
theories highlight, the most crucial, I believe, are incongruity and
superiority.Other points, like the release
of tension, may sometimes be relevant, but, it seems to me, that virtually
every humorous situation includes either something incongruous or an occasion
to feel in some way superior to a victimized individual.

My favorite joke from the entire book can
illustrate this.Here’s a version of it:

Eight-year-old Johnny and six-year-old Jimmy were
about to go downstairs for breakfast when Johnny says to his little brother, “Say
Jimmy, I think it’s about time we started cussing.So at the table this morning, I’ll say hell
and you say ass, OK?”

Jimmy happily assented to his brother’s plan.

So, when they sat down at the table, their mother
asked, “What will you guys have for breakfast?”

“Sure as hell, Mom, I’ll have some Cheerios!” says
Johnny.

At this, his mother grabbed him by the scruff of
the neck, threw him over her knee and walloped him five or six times.Then, dragging him upstairs, she threw him
into his bedroom and slammed the door.Finally, she stomped downstairs, sat back down at the table and said, “So,
what will you have, Jimmy?”

“I don’t know, Mom,” said Jimmy, “but you can bet
your ass it won’t be Cheerios.”

OK, so here we have it.There are incongruities between Jimmy’s innocence
and his rough language, between his focus on the issue of Cheerios rather than cussing as the source of Mom's anger, and, finally, between the expectation of
self-preserving compliance vs. blatant defiance in his response.We also have the victimization of poor little
Johnny and, perhaps, of Jimmy as well.

The authors of Inside
Jokes emphasize the incongruity feature of humor at the expense of the
victimization or “superiority theory.”And, though I agree that incongruity may be the single most important
factor in humor, I’m not willing to discount the superiority aspect as these
authors do.I can’t imagine how people
find America’sFunniest Home Videos amusing without acknowledging the importance
of superiority/victimization.I mean, we
all see the idiot attempting to jump his bicycle over the muddy ditch, we know
what’s coming, yet all too often we laugh at his disastrous splat when it comes
anyway.And how do groin shots manage to
evoke laughter year after year?I’m
expecting that an archaeologist will someday find a cave painting depicting a Megaloceros
butting a Neanderthal in the groin while a gang of Cro-Magnons stand around
laughing.

My main problem with the theory of Hurley et al.
is that it gives too much weight to the cognitive payoff of having an incongruity resolved as
the main driving force behind humor -- and even as the main explanation for the
very existence of humor.With apologies
for oversimplifying their position, I suggest that they make a mistake
by not recognizing the importance of humor’s social function.

If we are going to explain the universal existence
of humor in human societies, it seems to me the best way to do so is by
noticing the way in which humor functions to define social relationships,
either by cementing them, as when individuals share a laugh, or by specifying or denigrating outsiders
as in the case of satire and mocking humor.A theory encompassing these functions has room to accommodate both the
importance of incongruity (as when two people share a perspective on an issue, sometimes
by resolving an incongruity that reveals a heretofore unspoken truth) and superiority,
when the butt of a joke takes it on the chin or some other anatomical area.

Related to humor is another human phenomenon,
slang, which not only often incorporates humor, but which, like humor, is very
often employed either to strengthen a social bond or to distinguish in-group members from outsiders.I have to stop
here, given time's winged chariot, etc., but allow me to offer a couple of pictures for your consideration as I go:

This tree is not at all funny, but I took a picture of it during my morning walk because I thought it looked very cool.

This tree, however, is hilarious - it has a palm frond stuck in its branches. Ha, ha, ha! What a stupid tree!